All Obama's World's a Stage

Sometimes, though, when it happens is the most important characteristic of the “stuff.” Remarkable stuff with “remarkable timing” -- not only confined to the desktops of the IRS or even the halls of the entire Obama administration -- just so happens to land squarely on the Obama stage. And on that stage, timing is everything.

The administration and the Democrat-media complex would have us believe that the stuff truly just so happened, and happened to occur when it did -- as a matter of coincidence, and not craftsmanship. Some of the events could be said to have plagued the Obama presidency; others ultimately worked to its benefit. Still, the complex could be counted on to either present the stuff with the proper spin, or when necessary, pretend it never happened at all.

An opposing view suggests that the stuff itself, as well as the timing of the disclosure of it, was manufactured or contrived. Or, at the very least, a situation with a promising slant may have been given a little behind-the-scenes nudge, shout-out, or front-page placement. An event without a convenient angle (but not necessarily an inconvenient outcome for the administration’s agenda) would become part of a Friday news dump.

At either end of possible truth of this view, the complex still spun and held its collective nose when any odors of inconvenient facts or extraordinarily convenient timing wafted by. Perhaps out of fear of being “seen as a ‘right-wing nut,’” as former CBS investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson offered, or because they’re so far in the tank for “their president” -- the media focused on protection of the image they were largely responsible for creating, rather than discovering and reporting on the truth.

“Truth,” Mark Twain once remarked, “is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.” The truth of that quip is not only evident when attempting to get to the bottom of even one of the “scandals” of this administration, but also in recognizing the source of the aura that surrounds them.

For it is precisely the strangeness -- the failure of an event to pass the smell test -- that makes a charge of “conspiracy theory” ring true. The unusual nature, complexity, remarkable timing, volume and constant flow of “stuff” have combined to become a sort of defensive wall for the Obama administration. So has the audaciousness of some of the occurrences contributed to the aura of phoniness -- for who could imagine the nerve?

“Have you noticed,” Jonah Goldberg recently remarked, “that basically the only way this White House can get out from under one scandal or controversy is by getting crushed by another?”

That cycle -- scandal, outrage, subsequent rejection as “phony,” followed by another scandal -- has conveniently appeared throughout the Obama presidency. Pick any scandal and watch it run through the wash: Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

“Scandal exhaustion,” noted Tom Blumer, seems to be a part of the left’s “Cloward-Piven attempt to overwhelm opponents. With so many scandals out there, no single outrage can generate concerted, sufficiently visible opposition.”

It’s “a scandal a month,” Ben Shapiro commented, “and then every so often, President Obama decides to replace one scandal with another, the media loses interest. Two years later, we’re still asking the same questions and then told, ‘Dude, that happened like two years ago.’”

Besides brushing off scandals as old news, Goldberg observed that the complex often focuses attention on the GOP reaction of “outrage” instead of the outrageousness of the scandal itself.

And should anyone take note of the remarkable timing of the scandal cycle, there’s always the most effective and often-used weapon of the left: Ridicule. In this piece published at The New Republic titled “The Maddening Illogic of the IRS ‘Coverup’ Conspiracy Theory,” the author asserted:

Yet I'm 100 percent confident that if the IRS or another government agency were to rescue the Lerner emails a week from now, and provide them to Congress, the same people who are currently treating their absence as proof of a coverup would cast their reappearance as a conveniently-timed distraction from some other scandal.

The scandal-a-month program, conspiracy or not, certainly appears to be working to the benefit of the Democrats. In typical “Hollywood” fashion, noted John Hinderaker, they “have learned how to make childishness pay” by using talk of impeachment and lawsuits over the scandals as “fundraising props.”

The fact remains, though, that even one of the scandals, if shown in full but as fiction, would produce a screenplay too complicated to be remotely understandable -- certainly not entertaining, much less believable. Presented as real news, the truth could never be grasped by low-information voters whose minds never make it past the headline spin. Add all the scandals together, and the story would never make enough sense, as Twain quipped, to be considered acceptable fiction.

There are so many examples -- actually, far too many notable events that just so happened to occur and be revealed at the time that they did -- that to compile a list would undoubtedly play right into the complex’s hands as more evidence of a right-wing obsession with “scandal-mania.”

That list, though, seems to comprise a major part of the Obama script. Recall that Obama once lamented that his uninspiring storytelling was the biggest mistake of his first term. His technique has certainly been polished this time around, to include “meanwich,” “stinkburger,” and “so sue me” taunts, plus two new props -- his pen and his phone.

And while the Constitution, the economy and our national security crash and burn all around Obama’s stage -- the teleprompter continues to scroll, the show goes on, and the media complex applauds.

Sometimes, though, when it happens is the most important characteristic of the “stuff.” Remarkable stuff with “remarkable timing” -- not only confined to the desktops of the IRS or even the halls of the entire Obama administration -- just so happens to land squarely on the Obama stage. And on that stage, timing is everything.

The administration and the Democrat-media complex would have us believe that the stuff truly just so happened, and happened to occur when it did -- as a matter of coincidence, and not craftsmanship. Some of the events could be said to have plagued the Obama presidency; others ultimately worked to its benefit. Still, the complex could be counted on to either present the stuff with the proper spin, or when necessary, pretend it never happened at all.

An opposing view suggests that the stuff itself, as well as the timing of the disclosure of it, was manufactured or contrived. Or, at the very least, a situation with a promising slant may have been given a little behind-the-scenes nudge, shout-out, or front-page placement. An event without a convenient angle (but not necessarily an inconvenient outcome for the administration’s agenda) would become part of a Friday news dump.

At either end of possible truth of this view, the complex still spun and held its collective nose when any odors of inconvenient facts or extraordinarily convenient timing wafted by. Perhaps out of fear of being “seen as a ‘right-wing nut,’” as former CBS investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson offered, or because they’re so far in the tank for “their president” -- the media focused on protection of the image they were largely responsible for creating, rather than discovering and reporting on the truth.

“Truth,” Mark Twain once remarked, “is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.” The truth of that quip is not only evident when attempting to get to the bottom of even one of the “scandals” of this administration, but also in recognizing the source of the aura that surrounds them.

For it is precisely the strangeness -- the failure of an event to pass the smell test -- that makes a charge of “conspiracy theory” ring true. The unusual nature, complexity, remarkable timing, volume and constant flow of “stuff” have combined to become a sort of defensive wall for the Obama administration. So has the audaciousness of some of the occurrences contributed to the aura of phoniness -- for who could imagine the nerve?

“Have you noticed,” Jonah Goldberg recently remarked, “that basically the only way this White House can get out from under one scandal or controversy is by getting crushed by another?”

That cycle -- scandal, outrage, subsequent rejection as “phony,” followed by another scandal -- has conveniently appeared throughout the Obama presidency. Pick any scandal and watch it run through the wash: Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

“Scandal exhaustion,” noted Tom Blumer, seems to be a part of the left’s “Cloward-Piven attempt to overwhelm opponents. With so many scandals out there, no single outrage can generate concerted, sufficiently visible opposition.”

It’s “a scandal a month,” Ben Shapiro commented, “and then every so often, President Obama decides to replace one scandal with another, the media loses interest. Two years later, we’re still asking the same questions and then told, ‘Dude, that happened like two years ago.’”

Besides brushing off scandals as old news, Goldberg observed that the complex often focuses attention on the GOP reaction of “outrage” instead of the outrageousness of the scandal itself.

And should anyone take note of the remarkable timing of the scandal cycle, there’s always the most effective and often-used weapon of the left: Ridicule. In this piece published at The New Republic titled “The Maddening Illogic of the IRS ‘Coverup’ Conspiracy Theory,” the author asserted:

Yet I'm 100 percent confident that if the IRS or another government agency were to rescue the Lerner emails a week from now, and provide them to Congress, the same people who are currently treating their absence as proof of a coverup would cast their reappearance as a conveniently-timed distraction from some other scandal.

The scandal-a-month program, conspiracy or not, certainly appears to be working to the benefit of the Democrats. In typical “Hollywood” fashion, noted John Hinderaker, they “have learned how to make childishness pay” by using talk of impeachment and lawsuits over the scandals as “fundraising props.”

The fact remains, though, that even one of the scandals, if shown in full but as fiction, would produce a screenplay too complicated to be remotely understandable -- certainly not entertaining, much less believable. Presented as real news, the truth could never be grasped by low-information voters whose minds never make it past the headline spin. Add all the scandals together, and the story would never make enough sense, as Twain quipped, to be considered acceptable fiction.

There are so many examples -- actually, far too many notable events that just so happened to occur and be revealed at the time that they did -- that to compile a list would undoubtedly play right into the complex’s hands as more evidence of a right-wing obsession with “scandal-mania.”

That list, though, seems to comprise a major part of the Obama script. Recall that Obama once lamented that his uninspiring storytelling was the biggest mistake of his first term. His technique has certainly been polished this time around, to include “meanwich,” “stinkburger,” and “so sue me” taunts, plus two new props -- his pen and his phone.

And while the Constitution, the economy and our national security crash and burn all around Obama’s stage -- the teleprompter continues to scroll, the show goes on, and the media complex applauds.